Thursday, February 19, 2009

I have been so bad with my reading and I miss it! I crave that transport to another persons world and time. Books and stories are amazing that way. Movies can not do this. Movies are others interpretation. What they give to you is what you see and take away. But with a book it is your interpretation of what you see in the words. I love books!

So I read The Zookeepers Wife. Not a favorite. It had wonderful history in it (The time of WWII and stories centered around Europe at this time are my favorite) but sometimes too much. She tends to veer off into sidelines and tangents that could have clearly been left out. She was beautifully descriptive and obviously did quite a bit of research. However I never felt a true crescendo to the story. Something just fell a bit flat. This was a quote on Goodreads that I felt very appropriate, "Ackerman is fond of imagining and describing these historical circumstances but she remains ever distant from the heart of the story - perhaps careful of embellishment, she fails to bring the characters to life" (Chelle from Goodreads). So in true review form I will give, not stars, but hearts! I give The Zookeepers Wife ♥♥ & 1/2♥ out of 5 (had to give the half)

Now! On to a book I love! Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. Okay, the strange thing is, there is not a huge plot and crescendo here either. It was loose and fragmented but in the most poetic and captivating way possible! Three characters stories affected by one another from the beginning and then somehow touching each other throughout without again intertwining. It contains characters that are powerful and intense even in quiet ways. He is lyrical and thought provoking. There are strange turns but it seems to hold you tight through the bend.An Excerpt: "Who recovers from such events? You meet people even in middle age and discover that at some point, in the delicate path of life, they have been turned into the Jack of Hearts or the Five of Clubs. This is what has happened, I suspect, to Coop and me. We have become unintelligible in our secrets, governed by our previous selves. Just as Claire, in some way, will always be adjacent to our romance, the one who lost her family becasue of it. 'One fetal twin may absorb the other without malice, and retain it in its body a loose relic or two of one of the absorbed twins femurs. (The living twin grows and becomes an adult; the femur stay fetal.)' That marvel, Annie Dillard, wrote that. And perhaps this is the story of twinship. I have smuggled myself away from who I was, and what I was. But am I the living twin in the story of our family? Or is Claire? Who is the stilled one?"& "All my life I have loved traveling at night, with a companion, each of us discussing and sharing the known and familiar behavior of the other. It's like a villanelle, this inclination of going back to events in our past, the way the villanelle's form refuses to move forward in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion. Only the rereading counts, Navokov said...For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell."

Jhumpa Lahiri (a favorite author of mine) said in a review of Divisadero:it "illuminates what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world".I give Divisadero ♥♥♥♥♥!

Annnd next I will be reading Ship Fever stories by Andrea Barrett. I really enjoy short stories and have some authors that I just adore and make my mouth water! I hope she will be one of them!Okay and here is the deal. I can not tag only 7 people! I love reading and learning about strangers. That is what turns them into unstrangers! So if you are reading this and want to post 7 pieces of you please, please do so and become a little more unstrange. (I love that I can just make up my words) If you would, leave me a comment so that I can come and read. Have a fantastic day! ♥Emma

wow, i've never heard of most of these books, but i'll be sure to read them now. thanks for sharing these lovelies. i feel so bad, because i hardly read anymore because all my idle time is spent on my blog!xoxo,Micaela